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Deniz Sarikaya on Narratives of Mathematical Practice (and why they matter!)
March 20, 2023 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Deniz Sarikaya joining us from the Technical University of Denmark and speaking on “Narratives of Mathematical Practice (and why they matter!)” (abstract below).
The speaker will join via zoom, but there will be a live audience on the second floor of Pitzer College’s Gold Student Center in the Multipurpose room (in the building marked 3 here: https://www.pitzer.edu/about/maps-directions/quick-reference-map/).
abstract:
There are different narratives on mathematics as part of our world, some of which are more appropriate than others. Such narratives might be of the form ‘Mathematics is useful’, ‘Mathematics is beautiful’, or ‘Mathematicians aim at theorem-credit’. These narratives play a crucial role in mathematics education and in society as they are influencing people’s willingness to engage with the subject or the way they interpret mathematical results in relation to real-world questions; the latter yielding important normative considerations.
In this talk, we want to analyze different narratives of mathematics and suggest that mathematizing as a virtuous practice in its own right is a better narrative of mathematics than, for example, extrinsic narratives which focus on the results of mathematical activity and the application of mathematics in non-mathematical contexts. By ‘better’ we mean that the mathematizing-narrative describes mathematical practice more adequately and that it allows for a shift in mathematics education that yields beneficial outcomes for our society. This is heavily drawing on Freudenthal’s Realistic Mathematical Education.
The talk is based on joint work with Deborah Kant (University of Hamburg)